Much has been said about the recent announcement by Portland Online to “crowdsource” the refresh of their website. Silicon Florist and Pop Art have some interesting discussion going on. While I am not completely up-to-date on the project, I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

At first glance this sort of thing can seem like a great idea. It can be a boon to both young designers just starting their career and small businesses who might not be able to afford the services of a more established designer or agency. This helps designers quickly generate depth in their portfolios and provides a great service to small businesses.

Unfortunately in this case its hardly a good option. Given the size and complexity of a site that generates “over 2 million page views a month” it would take the talent and time of an agency or individual who can bring to bear the necessary experience and talent to complete such a project. This isn’t something that can be decided upon a few sexy proofs. For a successful launch, Portland Online would need to consider UI design, site architecture and hierarchy, the mechanics and logistics of content creation and organization, search engine optimization, and extensive project management.

Some have argued that Portland Online should be more responsible, but I don’t think its fair to wag our fingers at them. Their primary responsibility is to their organization, not to the design community. I think they should be given the benefit of the doubt and given the opportunity understand why a contest would be a bad choice. The design community should approach them with a spirit of open dialogue. We can help educate and inform them of other options and best practices. This is a great opportunity for us to educate others about the design process.

That said, the opportunity for dialogue has to be there for anyone to learn. I hope that the people at Portland Online can see past the communities somewhat knee jerk reaction and identify the well meaning and good intentions of designers. I would hope that they would take it into consideration and appraise wether their approach could be altered to better serve both themselves and the design community at large.

As I understand it, the Portland chapter of the AIGA is holding a meeting today to engage in just such a dialogue. I’m very interested to see what comes of it.

I must admit. When I first heard the name Startupalooza I dismissed it as a silly name that I wouldn’t be interested in. Then I started reading about who would be there and what they would be talking about. Josh Williams & Mark Frohnmayer of GarageGames. Kurt Deutscher to demo ExpressionEngine. Jason Glaspey & Matt King to demo Unthirsty. Heck, even my friends and co-founders of Jive, Bill Lynch and Matt Tucker would be talking. By the morning of Startupalooza I was driving my lady nuts with concerns about arriving on time. Despite the rain, sun and hail, we made it just fine, despite the general lack of parking in the area.

Todd and the Legion of Tech did an great job of putting the show together with the folks from Cubespace. to borrow Scott’s format, the highlights for me were:

• Listening to the Garage Games story and seeing the demo of Instant Action. It’s nice to see someone besides EA and the other giants doing something in the market. I’m amazed at what they’re doing with a web browser. The sheer possibilities are astounding. I’m also intensely curious to see how GarageGames and their developers put their player and gameplay data to use to make more engaging and fun games.


• Getting to pester Kurt about the future of Expression Engine. In particular the Forums Module. Its been in maintenance mode for a long time and I’m looking forward to seeing what they decide to do with it this year, if anything. He seemed to understand my pain and it was obvious he feels passionately about the product.


• Listening to Matt and Bill tell the Jive story to a large group. So glad to see they were using Keynote. I trained them well, though they forgot to use our new templates.


• Meeting Matt King, Scott Kveton, Rick Turoczy, Michael Richardson and more. I tend to shy away from events, getting sucked into my own projects or work at Jive. It was really great to put faces and voices to names. Its inspired me to attend Beer and Blog and other functions more often.


• Chatting with Martin about Treasurelicious. Its a killer app for a collector like myself. Hopefully I didn’t offend him when I asked if he was ready to give the site some more design love.

It’s obvious I moved to the right town. The collaborative spirit here is awesome. There is so much to take part in and everyone is eager for feedback and participation. Though it was still mostly a sausage-fest, it was good to see a number of women in the audience. I was also pleasantly surprised by the range of ages represented.

The event was quite inspiring and I’m glad we attended. I came home on fire, ready to get back to some pet projects so I can share them with others. I’m also eager to spread my design knowledge to those in need. As Rick (or perhaps Kistner) said on the Technopreneur panel, “Don’t take your knowledge for granted. Someone out there is in need of it.”

Oh and Todd, I still think the names silly. Silly, memorable and tied to a great event.